Firefox to get massive JavaScript performance boost — Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. The code was merged today (but is not yet ready to be enabled by default in the nightly builds) …

the birth of a faster monkey — Over the past year, JavaScript performance on the web has undergone a striking revolution. Virtually every browser has improved its engine to produce significant gains in execution speed; Firefox is about 3 times faster than Firefox 2 in various JavaScript benchmarks, for example.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WHEN YOUR BROWSER IS 7 TIMES FASTER? — Andreas Gal, Brendan Eich, Dave Anderson, Mike Shaver, and a whole host of other super-smart folks at Mozilla have been working hard to bring a Trace-tree based Just-in-time compiler to Firefox. I was a little curious about what sort …

Ma.gnolia Goes Open Source - Will it Matter? — Social bookmarking: the awkward genius hopes you'll take its ideas to parties for it. — Ma.gnolia, one of the most popular second tier social bookmarking services on the web, announced today at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle that the company …

If you build it... Lively, Google's virtual world, has been a flop — IT SOUNDED like a brilliant idea. Google, the internet giant, would bring 3-D virtual worlds to the masses by making them accessible through a web browser. Millions of people log into virtual worlds such as World …

Google's Swings and Misses — The Economist has an article looking at how Lively, Google's attempt to establish a foothold in the virtual world market, has flopped. — To be fair, it's far too early to determine whether Lively is a failure given it was only launched last month …

New Gears Geolocation API powers mobile web sites — Imagine if web sites could provide you with customized information based on your current location, even if you don't have GPS. Today we're launching the Gears Geolocation API for mobile and desktop browsers, while two third-party developers …

iHologram Looks Remarkable, but Is it Real? — Macenstein points us to an interesting video which claims to create a “holographic” effect on the iPhone by performing real time adjustments to the image based on rotation: … Our only confusion is its apparent ability to detect rotational information …

OpenSSH blacklist script — Last week Red Hat detected an intrusion on certain of its computer systems and took immediate action. While the investigation into the intrusion is on-going, our initial focus was to review and test the distribution channel we use with our customers, Red Hat Network …

How To Launch Software — 37signals recommends that software developers pursue what they call the Hollywood Launch. They don't give any argument for this method, except perhaps the title (as if Hollywood was a business you should try to imitate?) — I guess the idea is that you're supposed to do it since 37signals says to.

Who should be USA's CTO? — Today I visited Larry Lessig. He's the founder of Creative Commons. A professor of law at Stanford University. And does many other things. — He is one of those guys who is just interesting to talk to. Why? Whip smart and has a view of things that very few other people have.

Desktops v1.0 — Introduction — Desktops allows you to organize your applications on up to four virtual desktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do work in your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of the windows you're not using.

Poor earning virtual gaming gold — Nearly half a million people are employed in developing countries earning virtual goods in online games to sell to players, a study has found. — Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly.